Sunday, January 8, 2017

Crossbone Territory (Philippines Action, 1985)

1985 - Crossbone
Territory (JPM Productions)

[A Philippines
production for the international market. Project started by Tessie
Monteverde - daughter of Regal Films' Mother Lily - in 1983, filmed
and released around 1985; released on Japanese VHS as “Omega
Commando”, in West Germany as "Special Force U.S.A.", in
Argentina as "Eliminator", and in Brazil as "Território
de Sangue"]

From Filipino
company JPM Productions, the brainchild of Tessie Monteverde – as
in daughter of Regal Films’ Mother Lily – comes an attempt to
enter the export market via the well-trodden Ho Chi Minh Trail. Its
bare-bones narrative charts a cross-border mission led by Captain
Gabriel (Searchers Of The Voodoo Mountain’s Michael James) into
VC-infected Laos to destroy a radar station, and the long march back
to base camp through countless ambushes and bamboo traps while being
pursued by a tenacious NVA Colonel (Philip Gamboa). Some negatives,
like the same loop of native fucking flutes (!!!), are outweighed by
the positives: an abominably high body count, beheadings, a belt of
sliced ears, exploding limbs, and a tree groaning under the weight of
its severed heads, all courtesy of the Philippines’ Godmother of
Gore, Cecille Baun. This emphasis on brutal realism is hammered home
by the presence of real world Marine Don Gordon Bell, playing Sgt
Evans as well as co-writing and acting as “Technical Supervisor”,
and ex-Navy Willy Williams as the jive-talking, Stones-listening Sgt
Washington. Rounding out the team are Dutch-born Paul Vance
(co-writer with Bell and “Bugsy” Dabao, and also in JPM’s
bizarre 1984 post-apocalyptic Mad Warrior/Clash Of The Warlords) and
Rex (brother of Lito) Lapid as leader of the Montagnards, cutting an
impressively heroic figure throughout with a machine gun welded to
his hand. In final analysis, director Cabreira seems a lot more
comfortable with action scenes than dialogue, so it comes as a relief
there are very few moments where M16s AREN’T chewing the living cud
out of the Philippines’ jungles.

Nick Nicholson:
Crossbone Territorywas with Tessie Monteverde of JPM Productions.
Bugsy Dabao, Paul Vance and I wrote the script, but we were stuck
with Cinex on Firebird Conspiracy. This was back in 1983 and Don had
just finished Stryker with Cirio and was brought into the project and
ended up rewriting the script (which was terrible, since we were
writing at Bugsy's brother, Vic Dabao's home in Santa Ana on
Hollywood Street (of all places). LOL At the time Don was sharing an
apartment with Michael James in Ermita, and even had a Burger and
Chili Stand in front of Walt's "Cathouse" in Makati...
After those projects were done we worked together on Kings Ransom aka
The Destroyers with Cirio.

Don Gordon Bell:
Tessie Monteverde of JPM Productions. I do remember that Bugsy asked
me to work on changes on the script because you were on the EPIC
Firebird Conspiracy that took FOREVER to finish. We did use REAL RATS
caught from the hotel of a certain producer, I will not name...in the
scene with Aussie Mike. He had the balls to let five rats lick "movie
blood" Karo pancake syrup with #5 Red dye. Poor rats died from
the red dye. The two girls that worked at the Burger and Chili stand
took it over and did quite well, according to the Man himself, Nigel
Hogge.

Yes, Paul and I
worked on the screenplay together, with Bugsy Dabao. We were almost
locked up in the hotel of Mr. Lim night and day for three weeks.
During the day we worked on everything like uniforms, web gear,
military supplies, insignia, props for both Viet Cong, North
Vietnamese Army, Green Beret 'over the fence' or Special Observations
Group team members.

Bugsy taught us the
how to figure the Production Breakdown of sequences and requirements
for Daily Shooting Schedule, based on Sequences/set locations/Day or
Night/special requirements, etc.

At night we would
pound out the scenes with me manning the Corona manual typewriter. I
went through three ribbons and many revisions. Actual shooting was
done in under 7 weeks start to finish. Later I helped out on the
rough cut with the director. It was a good film for the price Mr. Lim
paid, AND we even convinced him to have "Smokeless" Squibs
on the BODY HITS. That was progress.

HERR LEAVOLD

Andrew Leavold owned and managed Trash Video, the largest cult video rental store in Australia, from 1995 to 2010. He is also a film-maker, published author, researcher, film festival curator, musician, and above all, unrepentant and voracious fan of the pulpier aspects of genre cinema. His writing has been published globally in mainstream magazines, academic journals and underground cinema fanzines, for the last two decades.

Leavold toured the world with his feature length documentary The Search For Weng Weng (2013). His ten years of research on genre filmmaking in the Philippines formed the basis of Mark Hartley's documentary Machete Maidens Unleashed! (released internationally in 2010), on which Leavold is also Associate Producer, and he has since been recognized both in the Philippines and abroad as the foremost authority in his area of expertise, teaching Philippine film history at university level in Australia, the United States, and throughout the Philippines. Leavold teamed with Daniel Palisa to co-direct The Last Pinoy Action King (2015), both a feature-length documentary on the late Filipino action idol Rudy Fernandez, and a dissection of film royalty, politics, privilege, idolatry, and the Philippines’ pyramid of power.

He is currently shooting two new feature-length documentaries – The Most Beautiful Creatures On The Skin Of The Earth (also with Palisa), the third in his Filipino trilogy, about erotic cinema under Marcos; and Pub, a history of the vibrant St Kilda music scene as told through its most outrageous progeny, Fred Negro. Both films are due for release in 2018.